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Awareness

Awareness


Webinar: 10 Secrets to Social Media MarketingDecember 30 2008
Secrets to Social Media MarketingJoin us January 13th as Paul Gillin, renowned author and technology journalist, introduces the most popular applications of social media marketing, shares 10 never before discussed secrets.

If you plan to attend the webinar, you can let us know what kinds of questions you have before the event so we can be prepared to answer them.   If we don't answer all of the questions during the webinar, we'll answer them here afterward.

Submit a comment reply to this post and join in the conversation.

If you have not registered for the event, you can do so here.










Social Media Marketing from a Marketers PerspectiveDecember 15 2008
I read a lot.  There's a lot to read.  I get my Google alerts daily and I scan blogs of interest discussing, debating and reviewing the benefits, metrics and realities of SMM.  There's a lot of valuable banter happening out there in the stratosphere.

I thought I would take a minute to write just a plain old marketers view of how social media is impacting how I market.  Because it is impacting what I do and for those folks not yet engaged in all of the benefits that social media has to offer - this might give you some insight as to why its time to step it up.

My role, what I do and what I love to do is promote Awareness  - our events, community and our thought leadership content through any and every avenue possible.  I have fun doing this because the world of social media allows me to engage with and follow folks who have the same interests and want to hear what I have to say - and vice versa. 

Awhile back we (myself and my stellar sidekick and web guru Lucas) began the tedious task of placing ourselves in as many strategic locations as we could - to name a few; Digg, Delicious, Technorati, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Friendfeed and so on, and so on.

I have made it a point to follow folks that want to hear about social media - not just anyone t







Social Media Predicitions 2009December 15 2008
I have just read a great compilation of thoughts from 14 individuals on the future of social media assembled by Peter Kim. Some of the thoughts are no brainers, like Google buying twitter to improve the great service - Jason Falls or everyone becoming a marketer from Charlene Li. What I found most interesting was the piece written by Ann Handley which she states;

"Sputtering Economy Entices Companies Into Social Media Space. Dwindling budgets suddenly make low-cost social media look like the pretty girl at the ball."

It is sentiments like this and what Awareness also advocates which our own David Carter spoke to in his post "Should companies embrace social media during economic turmoil" that this movement is slowly reaching all companies. That all companies are being affected by the recession and need to embrace the voice that carries the best and with the farthest reach.

Another great contributor in my opinion was Andy Sernovitz. Companies that focus on earning love and listen to t





Can we improve customer service and set a realistic expectation with Social Media?December 10 2008
Is there too much "me" in "social media"?

One of the fears big companies have with Social Media is that they will set expectations too high.  Give an immediate response, and the customer will begin to expect it.  I'm all for giving crappy customer service a kick in the pants, but this recent social media high-five that's being broadcast across Twitter that is a little disturbing to me.

JetBlue Twitterer Gets Customer a Wheelchair

In case you don't want to click the link, here is a synopsis.

a woman writes...

"@jetblue, I need a wheelchair!". 

the JetBlue person immediately texts back...

"Are you in an airport? shoot me a DM and let me see if I can help"

OK, first.  Excellent for JetBlue for getting on it.  Great customer service should be applauded.  But is this sustainable?  Someone had to read and respond, and other than avoiding being on hold, will this be staffed any better than their customer service on the phone?  A great outcome would have been if another citizen had chipped in to help too.  If thats the case than Iwould like to say ...

@starbucks "Latte's are too expensive"
@ImmigrationCanada whats with the freaking long lines for a passport
@IBM @Microsoft @Apple @anys



















What Twitter NeedsDecember 9 2008

Twitter feels like its at the same crossroads Blogs were at in 2003.

Blogs were interesting, but a quote can be found by yours truly where I said "Blogs are just bad content management systems". Some people liked the simplicity, but it drove me nuts that the full potential was not reached because they lacked...

  • Security how could I make one post public and another post private.
  • Taxonomy (or structure) - Tags are good.. but Taxonomy and categories could be tied to security. I.e. you could see posts in one category, but not another. Or you could subscribe to a category, but not the whole blog. 
  • Other Post Attributes - info like location, start date, end date, video, photo's, file attachments, tags etc. 
  • Versioning - the ability to track changes

Those features made a post more powerful, it made the content more responsible.. all which made it a more likely tool a business might use. Oh, little shameless plug, but after we added those features Forrester published their first Wave Report on Corporate Blogging systems and guess who was the top of that chart? Awareness (aka iUpload at the time). But I digress.

Twitter is in the same boat. Social Media Rock Star, Chris Brogan, wrote about how he'd like to see it fixed.  Twitter Needs Two